I am now 62 years old. I am a successful person by all means. But when I look at what I have achieved I can see some people somehow guiding me to those achievements. When I look at my failures, I can see that I didn't know how to do them and there wasn't any body to guide me to avoid failures. I am sure now that I went thru a lot of difficulties in my life and if I knew what to know and what to do, my life should have been much easier now.

Life coaching is a quest for improving life through accepting the guidance of some one you trust. Other people see us differently from the way we see ourselves. We need a life coach to see us as other people see us and tell us how we are seen by other people. What we see in others we cannot see in ourselves. We want a life coach to know how we see other people and how we should see them. When people listen to us they hear what we would do not say. We need a life coach to listen to us when we speak and tell us what is it that we are not saying.

When people look at us they see what we are not. We need a life coach to look at us and tell us why people do not see in us what we really are. To other people we are not what we think we are. We want to have a life coach to tell us what other people think of us and why they think of us as they think of us. If somebody likes us, she sees in us what she likes and if somebody hates us he sees in us what he hates. We are different from what people think of us. We need a life coach to understand our thoughts and tell us how our thoughts affect ourselves and others. People make their opinion of us according to their own opinions. We want a life coach to tell us how our opinions affect the opinions of others and how our opinions alienate others from us. Nobody tells us how she sees us. We need a life coach to guide us in making a life we desire. Nobody tells us what they think of us. We need a life coach that can tell us how wonderful we are when we are really wonderful and how stupid we are when we really become stupid.

Since we cannot take any criticism even if it comes from very close friends and relatives, we need a life coach to observe our behaviours and give us feedback. If somebody is ready to have feedback in a very constructive way, it is time for her to have a life coach.

We need a life coach to tell us what she thinks of us, what other people think of us and how we need to behave to please ourselves without hurting others. We have not learnt to think of ourselves. We have learned to think of others. We have not learnt to give ourselves feedback about ourselves but we have learned to give other people the feedback they do not want to hear. Since we do not reflect on ourselves and since we do not want unwanted feedback, we need a life coach to think of our best interests and give us the feedback we need to move towards our desired outcomes.
After finishing a seminar, one of my students approached me in the closing session and asked me how did I like criticism? I said, "I love criticism if it comes from me." Everybody laughed. And then I started criticising some of the students who had been in my seminar. Few days after the end of the seminar as I reflected on the whole thing I realised that if I was capable of accepting criticism and feedback from my students, I was likely to learn from them and improve my seminars for the next times. But I did not like to hear criticism especially from my students. That was the reason that I repeated some of the mistakes in the seminars that followed.

The most successful people are those who are more receptive to feedback. Hearing criticism is bitter but its long-lasting fruits are very sweet.